The Indian Coast Guard

I had gone to the main post office (GPO) after a long time and found that two people were smashing down entire walls inside the Philatelic section. It seems that renovations were going on. Its always good that the postal department is sprucing up the Philatelic section, but the poor lady who sits at the desk has now been shifter to a small cubbyhole that has to be accessed by a window! A very uncomfortable perch for the poor lady, so I didn't bother her too much and came away with a few miniatures.

This is the miniature on the Indian Coast Guard. Working in the Merchant Navy and having traded on the Indian Coast for more than ten years, I must commend the Coast Guard for doing an amazing job when faced with such a mamoth task with so few resources.

The miniature is neat, but I like miniatures which have the stamps as a part of a bigger picture, which are not present here. The units on display in this sheet are the Dornier Aircraft, Chetak helicopter, Samar Class patrol craft and the Air Cushion Vessel.

To the coastguard I am personally obligated because of an incident which happened on one of my ships after I had signed off from it. One of the chaps fell in the water while rigging the pilot ladder. Unfortunately this fellow was so overweight that the rest of the complement couldn't pick him up. They had a situation where this fellow was happily floating in the water with life buoys and secured nicely with two heaving lines , but try as that might, they couldn't pick up this fellow weighing about 200 Kgs. Finally they launched the lifeboat, which they couldn't pick up due to the waves picking up. So now they had eight men who needed rescuing. I knew most of the men involved and we had a good laugh over it later. But I'm sure it must have been a sticky issue for the Captain to put in his report at that time.

Please have a look at the excellent resources below

Resources :

India Coast Guard Website
Coast Guard on Wikipedia
Coast Guard on Bharat Rakshak

The india post

Just because I haven't been very active over the last few months, doesn't mean that the lethargy has spread to India Post. The chaps out there have been keeping themselves well occupied. I wanted to check up something on their website and found that due to an oversight, I had not put up the India websitte in my links of world postal websites. I rectified that error and just to make it more easire, you can find the link to India post main webpage here.

I forgot to put this here before but on 23rd sep last year, India post changed their corporate logo to the one given up here. The original one was the one given on the right.

Honestly I'm not sure why, but I liked the older one better. I think its just a matter of getting used to it.

Dinesh wrote a nice article on it here, if you are interested.

Also other changes to have come up are that india post has stopped sea mail parcle service from 1st jan. Its a sad thing as I am associated with the sea myself, but I guess in todays world, it was something inevitable.

Also for delivery outside india, India post has entered a jloint venture with the Duetsche post to form something called WorldNet Express . We'll just have to wait for user feedback and about how much more expensive this service might be.

75 Years of the Indian Airforce.

Its only so long that I will be able to use to excuse of setting things in order before starting to post more regularly. :)

And it is time I put up some more stamps of India. I have written earlier about the Philatelic account I have with India Post and so on coming back, I was surrounded with the stamps released by India over the past five months.

One of the neat sheets I got was this one released on the Platinum Jubilee (1932 - 2007) of the Indian Air Force.

The Indian Air Force was officially established on 8 October 1932. But by the time they actually got around to flying their planes it was 1st April 1933. So it's probably apt that I got the 75 years of the Air force in 2008! The IAF inetially compromised of six RAF-trained officers and 19 Havai Sepoys (air soldiers) and four Wapiti Airplanes. The Wapiti is thus aptly pictured on the main sheet on the lower left.

The others featured on the main sheet from top Left are the Dhruv, the AWACS and an IL 78 refuelling two Su-30 airplanes.

The neat thing about this sheet, is that on either sides of the sheet, are the pictures of the planes that have accompanied the IAF in this 75 years journey. The planes on the left side from top to bottom are: The Toofani , Mi 26 Helicopter (The biggest Helicopter in the world) , Gnat, Packet (C 119), Hunter and the Jaguar.

On the Right from top to bottom are: Dakota DC-3, Mig 21, AN 32, Mirage 2000, Vampire 52 and finally the Mig 25 (Foxbat).

A very comprehensive history of the IAF can be found here on the IAF website.

As you can see the FDC released on the occasion is a stunner as well. When taken with the previous released stamps and FDCs of the humble Gnat, 16 Sqn of the Air force and the sheet released on the 100 years of Man's first flight, the sheet finds itself in good company.

300 Years of 15 Punjab Regiment

After my last post about the Indian Regiment that helped squash the first war of Indian Independence, let us talk about another one. The Punjab Regiment has been doing it for much more the 150 year of the Sikh Regiment. In fact the India Post released a stamp commemorating the 300 years of the establishment of the Punjab Regiment. This regiment has the dubious honour of receiving battle honours for crushing the Indian war of independence at Lucknow.

But if the India Post could find it in their heart to forgive the regiment, then who are we to harbour any ill feelings. The Punjab regiment is naturally one of the oldest regiment in the Indian Army. One of the interesting things about the Punjab regiment is that it was one of the first regiments to volunteer for service abroad over sea & land. As a result not only is their motto, "By land & sea", but also its crest also has a ship built in it. This is probably one of the only infantry regiments with a ship on it.

The 15 Punjab was raised on Baishaki Day of 1705 by Baba Alla Singh, the founder of patiala state. Apart from being the oldest infantry in the Indian army, they are also the second most decorated. Of course if you consider that they are the oldest, that might not work out to a very good average rate of decorations per year! But then lives can' be calculated in averages I guess.


Source & further reading : Global Security ,

150 Years of the Sikh Regiment

While it is much rarer for the stamps to be released on particular squadrons of the Air Force, many regiments of the Army have had stamps released on their behalf. The one that we are going to talk about today is the stamp commemorating 150 years of the third batallion of the Sikh Regiment.

The Sikh regiment is probably one of the most decorated Regiments in the India army with 2 Param Vir Chakra, 14 mahavir chakras & 10 Victoria Crosses & 68 Vir Chakras. The sixth regiment came into existence on 1st Aug 1846. If you go back to my post on the first war of independence, you will probably realise that this regiment actually fought against India in India's war of Independence. It was with the help of the Sikh Regiment that the British were actually able to take back Delhi from the Indians.

India post has decided to demonstrate that it holds no grudges against the good chaps & released a stamp on them in 2006.

Any mention of the Sikh regiment would be incomplete without mention of the "Battle of Saraghari". Its an amazing story of valour in which 21 men fought of an army of more then 10,000 tribesmen till their death. In fact the UNESCO has described the Battle of Saragarhi as one of eight stories of collective bravery.

There is just one thing I would like to raise here. I agree that I come across as a cynic but why is it that the greatest moment of any group, be it a batallion, or a country comes across when all of its members die? Maybe one day in 1968, a platoon of Sikh infantry lost its way & ended having a drink with another pakistani platoon. Why couldn't that be its finest moment?

Sources & Further reading : Wiki, Bharat Rakshak , Saraghari in Wiki .

Ascent of Mount Everest - 2003

Another beautiful stamp that India post released a while back was one commemorating the 50 years of the ascent of the Everest.

One of the first serious attempts to climb the Everest was done by the great explorer George Mallory & Andrew Irvine in June 1924. The two never returned & it remained a great mystery till 1999 as to if they had indeed climbed the Everest before perishing. In 1999, the Mallory & Irvine research expedition finally found their bodies and it was established that the two had not been able to make it to the top.

It was much much later in 1953 that Tenzing & hillary finally made it to the top of Everest. Apparently they only stayed on top for about 15 minutes as they were low on oxygen and then made their way down again. They barely had time to bury a few sweets, plant a flag & click a few pictures.

As I have mentioned earlier, this type of a miniature sheet is my favourite where the stamp is only a part of the bigger picture. Every time I hold a miniature sheet like this, I feel like going in a corner & giving an evil snicker at all the suckers who got conned into buying the incomplete picture for the same cost. :)

One great site for people interested in this is the national geographic which has a neat page hosted for this occasion.

EDITED- 14.08.07
-------------------

All those who actually did read through this post till here, really must read the comment no 2 from Jake who actually was part of the Mallory & Irvine expedition of 1999. Thanks for dropping by & correcting me Jake!

1857 - The First war for Independence

I have always believed in consistency & I consistently scored dismally in History. And other subjects. But History in particular was something I simply "Didn't get". And it still confuses me. During the time I was in school, we refered to the uprising of 1857 as the "Mutiny of 1857". The struggle for independence - so we were taught - only began in the began in the 1900's with the call for "swaraj" by Tilak.

But today, any mention of the word "mutiny" is reacted to with great outrage & blogger effigies are burnt on the roads. It has been established beyond reasonable doubt that the war for independence truly began in 1857.

To remove any lingering doubts among the cynics, the India post came out with a surprise release titled " 1857 - The First war for Independence "

Reagrdless of the politics of it all, the uprising of 1857 was certainly an event that changed the course of the country. Practically every part of the country under the contol of the East India Company rose up in arms and the conflict was brutal. The Miniature sheet shows the artists impression of the battles at Kanpur & Lucknow.

The Kanpur (Cwanpur) mutiny was a turning the notions of the british public firmly against the Indians. In Kanpur, The British men & women were killed after they had surrendered to the army of Nana Sahib.

The seige of Lucknow was probably the most famous of the uprising. The british Commisrner resident of Lucknow managed to fortify about 1700 soldires inside the residency & after 90 days of the seige, the soldires were reduced to less than 300. In September 25, the first british troops managed to get through the seige, led by Havelock, but as they could not break out, they joined the residency under the seige. The Seige was finally lifted in November by another british Column under Colin Campbell.

The book "Freedom at midnight" tells us that throughout the seige of Lucknow, the Union Jack kept flying on the flag mast of the Residency to signal any approaching relief column that the british still awaited them. Due to this, even after the British supressed the Indians, the flag was kept flying to honor the dead. In the whole of the British Empire, when all Flags were pulled down at Dusk, this was the only Union jack that was kept Hoisted. The story goes that on indepndence, the British Engineers, cut down the Flag Mast & poured cement in the foundation. No Other flag would fly where the Lucknow Union jack Flew.

Postcards from India Post - Buddha

In continuation of the series of postcards on the Himalayan lakes, the India post has also come out with a similar series on the 2550 years of the mahaparinirvana of Buddha. The quality of these cards is great as well and the cards look classy even without the accompanying Buddha Stamp. I think the India post is simply another thing that keeps getting better with age. :)

Indian Air force - The Gnat (Mk I)

Another neat stamp that I recently got my hands on was this one from way back in 1967. The stamp depicts the Gnat. The Gnat was made by the Folland company in 1955, but it never came to much till the Indian Air force decided to pick it up and use it as its mainline fighter plane. The Indians bought 40 airframes in the various stages of construction and then built a modified version of the same at HAL called the Ajeet Gnat (Mk I). The IAF operated the Gnat from 1958 to 1978 & 175 of these beautiful aircraft were built at the HAL.Dad with Gnat 1969

The reason that I'm rather fond on these air planes is that dad flew these planes extensively in 22 Sqn and 21 sqn of the IAF, and also flew a lot of these babies as a test pilot in the HAL.

The Gnats achieved great success as a combat air plane against the more technically superior Sabres of the Pakistani air force. As per dad, during the 1971 war, the biggest advantage that they had during the 1971 war was that the Pakistani pilots simply couldn't spot these small airplanes.

I've put up more pictures of dad during that time over at "My daddy Strongest". Drop by there if you have some time. Dad still has the helmet worn in the picture down below. I'm sure there are a lot of great memories of the plane inside the head that wears that helmet as well. :)

100 Years of the India post

The kind reader might remember my previous post about the 150 years of the India post. I recently got my hands on the stamp released by India post on the occasion of the 100 years of the India post in 1954.

For some strange reason, all the three postmen in the stamp look the same. Its as if a cartoon character went hopping in different settings for a photo-op.

I agree that true blood philatelists out there will shudder at the state of the stamp. But maybe the 50 years stamp that must have been released in 1904 will be in better shape. :)

150 Years of the Indian Railways

Another thing that is only150 Years old in this ancient country is the Indian Railways. I still haven't started a collection on trains, but this is one of my favourite stamps. Not only is the art work of the stamp very nice, but this is one of those miniature sheets where the stamp is part of a bigger picture. This adds beauty to the miniature sheet and the whole thing looks absolutely stunning.

As I said, this is one of my favourite stamps and finds a permanent resting spot on the bottom of my blog. But I felt that this beauty deserved a spot of its own under the sun.


I don't travel as much in trains as I would like to. But I do have a very fond spot in my heart for the Indian Railways. The Railways, along with the Indian Postal service is a pretty good representation of modern India. Nobody knows what goes where, but the machine somehow keeps running. :)

150 Years of the India Post

The postal department has come a long way since the day they would put a sack on top of a guy and send him around the countryside to deliver the post. Well okay I know that to be untrue. The Indian postman still does exactly that. One case in point is my post on the "Holiest postoffice in the world". Out there the postman actually has to walk 14 Km up the mountain every second day.

Regardless, the Indian Postal service completed a 150 years of operation in 2004 and released this set of four stamps. The stamps try tell us the chronological evolution of the Indian postal service with the first stamp starting the tale with carts and small boats, and the fourth stamp telling us about the "E-post".

"e-Post" is an initiative of the India post that was launched in 2004 but has not really been very successful. You can read up about the e-post on the Indiapost website. But the fact is that the initiatives such as e-post tried to dissolve the barriers between the population having accesses to the Internet and the ones who didn't.

After more then a century and half of operations in a country like this, I'm not sure how good the the india post is. But of one thing I am sure. If nothing else, those chaps atleast managed to produce one postal enthusiast. :)

Presidents Fleet Review 2006

After those disturbing images of me and that unfortunate trend of postbox fascination, let us come back to our stamps of planes. This set of four stamps was released by the India post in 2006 on occasion of the Presidents fleet review.

The first Presidents fleet review of the Indian Navy took place on 1953. During that review, the First Indian President Dr Rajendra Prasad inspected four lines and 25 ships. It wasn't a very impressive showing by most standards, In that fleet review, the pride of the fleet was INS Delhi, which when it came into the Indian Navy, was already an 20 year old vessel. But then we had got independence hardly six years back and the fact that 25 ships managed to steer in four lines must have been a neat sight in itself.

The next time we dared to have a fleet review was in 1964. Instead of the President that review was inspected by the defence minister Y B Chavan. The fleet was led by the newly inducted aircraft carrier INS Vikrant.

After that the fleet review were held on many occasions. The review kept getting bigger and better. The best and the biggest one was on 1989 with 2 aircraft carriers and a flypast by 39 naval aircraft.

A great article from which I collected a lot of info was this article by the ex navy chief Admiral J G Nadkarni (Retd).

Let us concern ourselves with the planes in the stamps. The First stamp features the Sea Harrier. A plane if you ask me, deserves a postage stamp of its own. A beautiful piece of work and the stamp doesn't do it much justice.

The next stamp contains the Sea king chopper. Something that I am fond of only for the reason that if sometime my ship gets in any trouble, this is the one that will in all likelihood be sent to fish me out of trouble.

I am not sure what the third plane is, but it seems to be some sort of a surveillance plane of the Navy / coast guard.


Finally I wanted to put in a picture of this fleet review. The Prsident was Dr A P J Abdul Kalam. A person I liked immensely and he is flanked by the Naval Chief at that time.

The Humble Letter box

Enough with the flying boxes called aeroplanes that grab all the footage and the attention. Let us spare a few lines and space for the little boxes on our streets that do us such a great service.

Think of it. You take great pains to write a letter. If you are someone like me, you spend a few sleepless nights thinking which stamp will "go with" the letter that you are sending. And then after all that, you are just supposed to abandon the piece of history (probably in another 300 years) into a metal bin? What is the guarantee that some canine isn't stalking the box from across the corner waiting for its kidneys to pump fluid into the bladder. And this foundation is supposed to withstand the Cows scratching their backs against them? And does somebody out there actually think that the housing is going to withstand the great Indian Monsoons?

And yet over the many many years, the suckers that we are, we have been trusting our work and emotions into this box. With mixed results of course. I am sure that these boxes eat up some of the mails, but they haven't bothered mine too many. (Apart from a few they kept for a while because they liked them I guess).

I think we all have our ways to ensure that the letter boxes deliver the mail on to their mysterious ways. Puja confessed to me that she actually says a prayer to the post box every time she drops a letter into one of these. Not me. I like to think that I'm on a more friendlier level with them. So every time that I drop the letter, I pat the guy a couple of times and ask him how it is doing.

But regardless of what they tell me, I always try not to look back as I walk away.

Centinary of Man's first flight

Hi all today the stamp sheet I want to talk about is the set of four stamps released by Indian postal dept to commemorate the centenary of man's first flight. (Feminists kindly note that usage of words as per postal dept!)

The four flying machines pictured in the sheet are :

• HT-2
• Marut
• LCA
• Dhruv

Lets get into a bit of details. The thing to note about all of these is the fact that all of them were made by the Indian institution Hindustan Aeronautical Limited (HAL)

I don't think I want to incorporate choppers in my collection, but seeing as they managed to sneak in on the back of the three planes, lets start with the Dhruv. The Wiki does speak a lot about the dhruv. The Dhruv is an advanced light Helicopter and the programmes for developing it began way back in 1984 and the deliveries finally began in 2002. One of the only three Helicopter display teams in the world, the Sarang of the Indian Air force performs with four of these machines.

The HT-2 as it is popularly called is actually the "Hindustan Trainer 2". I have already written a lot about the HT-2 in my other blog "My Daddy Strongest" , so I won't go into all that again.

In my opinion the HF24 Marut and the LCA have not really been great success's of the HAL. You can read up more about them at Wiki and at the bharat rakshak website. Some would actually debate the fact that the Indian govt actually felt it appropriate to showcase their failures.

But the way I look at it, if you pump in millions of dollars of money to get something that flies, the least you can get out of them is a couple of postage stamps!


(PS: I do realise that the stamp in my picture is a little damaged. A much better one is framed on one of the walls.)

16 Squadron , Indian Air Force

It is very rare to find Indian Post releasing stamps comemorating one squadorns of the airforce. There have been many stamps of different Batallions of the Army, but rarely a seperate stamp on a squadorn of the Airforce. As a result I was pleasently surprised to find a stamp released on the 50 years of the 16th Squadron.

I went scouring the dependable bharat rakshak website for any information on the 16 Sqn, but there did not seem to be much of that around. The 16 Sqn is called the "Black Cobra's" and their sqn motto in "Praharodata". After that much information, it seems to get a bit lost. It claims the raising date of the sqn as 1951 and the first plane in the 16 Sqn as Spitfires. In the above stamp, each of this does not seem tobe the case. The unit must have clearly been raised in 1955 & the bottommost plane is the Librator.

On going on to the website of the indian air force, I didn't find much more about it other then the fact that its crest was the one on the left.

The planes featured in the stamps are as follows from the bottom:

• Liberator
• Canberra
• Jaguar
  

The FDC for the occasion is a stunner. I am not a fan of the Jaguar. It might be a damn good plan, but it just doesn't llok that great in the air. But look at the snap of this one on the ground. I think this is one of the rare occasion when a plane looks better on the ground then it does in Air.

I am not sure what armaments the jaguar is carrying, but it I think I can spot drop-tanks below the fusilage. These tanks carry additional fuel so as to increase the range of the aircraft. These tanks are called so because they are supposed to be dropped off the plane once they are empty so that flight charecteristics are improved. But in these days of cost cutting, I very much doubt if these are ever dropped. :)

The Field Post Office

When we were moving around the country with out air force dad, we would be passed on from one APO (Army post Office) to the other. I found it fascinating then and still do that a chap might be posted in the far flung hill ranges of the Himalayas but, if you only put on the envelope, his name followed by the APO he was under, the letter would make its way to him.

In the Indian Army, the first field post office came into operation during 1856 to accompany the expeditionary forces to Persia. This FPO operated in Bushire from 12 December 1856 to 02 Oct 1857. The location of Bushire can be seen on the first of the stamps in the series (a revelation to the map challenged person like me)

The field post office was set up initially only during war time , but over the years it has become an integral part of the defense services. In 2006, the FPO completed 150 years of service and this set of four stamps was released.


The First day cover is good as it contains a collage of small pictures. I can't identify any of the pictures as being very famous pictures, but I'm sure that they must be. On the right top corner of the envelope, you can spot a small stamp featured on the cover. On enlarging that stamp, I could read out the script in Hindi " Bharatiya suraksha Ghatak korea". In English this translates as "The Indian Contingent force - Korea." The stamp is for the value of 4 Anna's.